AIRBUS SAS

COMANOID investigates the deployment of robotic solutions in well-identified Airbus airliner assembly operations that are laborious or tedious for human workers and for which access is impossible for wheeled or rail-ported robotic platforms. As a solution to these constraints a humanoid robot is proposed to achieve the described tasks in real-use cases provided by Airbus Group. At a first glance, a humanoid robotic solution appears extremely risky, since the operations to be conducted are in highly constrained aircraft cavities with non-uniform (cargo) structures. Furthermore, these tight spaces are to be shared with human workers. Recent developments, however, in multi-contact planning and control suggest that this is a much more plausible solution than current alternatives such as a manipulator mounted on multi-legged base. Indeed, if humanoid robots can efficiently exploit their surroundings in order to support themselves during motion and manipulation, they can ensure balance and stability, move in non-gaited (acyclic) ways through narrow passages, and also increase operational forces by creating closed-kinematic chains. Bipedal robots are well suited to narrow environments specifically because they are able to perform manipulation using only small support areas. Moreover, the stability benefits of multi-legged robots that have larger support areas are largely lost when the manipulator must be brought close, or even beyond, the support borders. COMANOID aims at assessing clearly how far the state-of-the-art stands from such novel technologies. In particular the project focuses on implementing a real-world humanoid robotics solution using the best of research and innovation. The main challenge will be to integrate current scientific and technological advances including multi-contact planning and control; advanced visual-haptic servoing; perception and localization; human-robot safety and the operational efficiency of cobotics solutions in airliner manufacturing.

The main objectives are to propose R&D activity to reduce cost and increase ramp up production of composite parts for structural application on aerospace products. These objectives are fully in line with objectives of the call MG1.8. European partners consortium is composed with end user (AIRBUS Group) and research laboratories (DLR, Stuttgart University, Delft University) and a dissemination expert partner (EASN). All selected partners have a strong experience with aerospace research activity. To fulfill the proposal objectives, the main technical topics that will be addressed are new low cost materials, new efficient heating concepts for composite curing, new forming process for large and thick parts, new low cost assembly processes, new environment around the mold (reusable bagging, reusable de-molding agent) and out of autoclave manufacturing concepts. Certification cost reduction for new issues such as sparking characterization during lightning strike impact will also be addressed. As one of the key points of this project is to propose new low cost concepts for composite part production, a specific workpackage will be dedicated to cost analysis of developed solutions and comparison with existing state of the art cost of composite parts. Most promising results will be integrated in a composite validation elements produced by the partners to give more credibility to the results. To get the maximum outputs from this project, the activity is distributed between different partners according to their expertise on the topic they will address. We have an important result exchange phase during the validation element definition and manufacturing activity. Globally for the developed technologies a TRL between 4 and 5 is foreseen at the end of EFFICOMP project.

Planning and scheduling (P&S) is a core area of AI. Its aim is to build systems that assist humans in planning, organising and optimising courses of action to achieve complex objectives. Despite the pressing need for decision-support systems for P&S applications in industry and public services, current approaches do not satisfy essential properties of trustworthy AI, such as transparency, explainability, robustness, safety and scalability. TUPLES is a 3 year project aiming to obtain scalable, yet transparent, robust and safe algorithmic solutions for P&S. The cornerstones of our scientific contributions will be (1) combining symbolic P&S methods with data-driven methods to benefit from the scalability and modelling power of the latter, while gaining the transparency, robustness, and safety of the former and (2) developing rigorous explanations and verification approaches for ensuring the transparency, robustness, and safety of a sequence of interacting machine learned decisions. Both of these challenges are at the forefront of AI research. We will demonstrate and evaluate our novel and rigorous methods in a laboratory environment, on a range of use-cases in manufacturing, aircraft operations, sport management, waste collection, and energy management. Our results also include practical guidelines derived from the lessons learnt in this process, and open-source software tools and test environments enabling the human-centered development and assessment of trustworthy P&S systems. Expected outcomes include increased productivity, decreased environmental footprint and the empowerment of workers in the above sectors. These could translate into huge economic, environmental and social impacts if trustworthiness ends up driving mass adoption of P&S. The TUPLES consortium includes world-leading researchers in several fields of AI (P&S, constraints, machine learning, explanations), humanities and social sciences (psychology, law, ethics), and experts of their applications.

Promoting labour mobility across Europe is a central objective of the Europe 2020 Strategy and it aims to tackle increasing labour and skill shortages in the EU. Cross-border labour mobility is expected to benefit both individual citizens, employers and the aggregate economy. In addition, intra-EU mobility is a means to foster European integration. Although migration into OECD countries increases, driven largely by people moving within the EU, migration into and within Europe is still short of target levels. Despite a favourable legal framework for mobility, migrants still face a wide range of problems and obstacles that hamper cross-border labour mobility. Employment prospects for immigrants are below those of natives and overqualification, i.e. employment below skill levels, is widespread in most European countries. Consequently, the growth potential of immigrants is far from realised. Little is known about transnational mobility patterns and the length of migration episodes as well as about retention processes of foreign employees. There is considerable scope to make existing labour mobility more efficient and beneficial for all parties involved. GLOMO’s focus is on global mobility into EU countries and within the EU and its impact on careers. The policy making white papers and research suggest that the future Europe will witness even higher and more natural mobility. To assure that Europe is ready for it, our objectives are (a) to systematically generate knowledge about the mobility phenomenon and its implications (success factors, effects and added value); (b) provide trainings to (further) develop early-stage and senior researchers understanding the complex multidisciplinary phenomenon of mobility, and (c) suggest relevant implications for individuals, organisations, the European societies and economies. The joint research and training programme will be conducted within an interdisciplinary and intersectoral network of experts in the field.

SUNJET II proposal responds to the H2020-MG-2014 Topic 1.8 International Cooperation in Aeronautics of the work programme. Its main objectives are: • Recommendations and guidance for future EU-Japan cooperation in the field of aviation Building on the SUNJET project, SUNJET II will produce consolidated roadmaps in the fields of Aircraft, Systems and Equipment, with the support of R&T institutions, Academics and Clusters. The roadmaps’ consistency as well as their level of granularity will be checked, key topics for future EU-Japan R&T cooperation in the field of aviation will be selected, with an assessment of the funding and time required, and concrete recommendations for future EU-Japan Calls will be produced, taking into consideration the EU and Japanese R&T mechanisms. A Guidance Desk will make available relevant guidance material, including recommendations and best practices to a wide community interested in building a joint research project between Europe and Japan in the future. • Promote communication and networking between EU and Japan in the field of aviation A Forum of exchanges between European and Japanese stakeholders will be created. It will be comprised of four physical meeting sessions in Europe and in Japan. A virtual platform will also be set up to maintain communication and develop new contacts remotely between the meetings. Furthermore, a collaboration (web based) platform will be created, designed to host social and semantic functionalities in order to boost the communication between European and Japanese stakeholders. Ensuring that the interested stakeholders will continue benefiting from the services and tools developed by SUNJET II even after the end of the project, the collaborative platform as well as the technical database connecting all roadmaps will be transferred to a permanent authority capable of maintaining it. A Japanese mirror organization will be put in place on the basis of the contacts already established.